


stone/sponge

by 1001cranes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Imprinting, Arranged Marriage, Imprinting, M/M, Mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter has a taste for the all-consuming; he doesn’t find it at all strange to be in the minor percentage of werewolves who have mates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stone/sponge

**Author's Note:**

> based on an anon prompt, originally posted [here](http://the1001cranes.tumblr.com/post/73334425577/part-1-thinking-about-arranged-marriage-mates-steter). 
> 
> Warning for the mild squickiness that comes with ~mates, but Peter and Stiles are totally into it, and Stiles is 18 before any ish happens.

Peter Hale is twenty-five, a werewolf, and a bit of a son of a bitch. He spends most of his time bumming around grad school because Talia thinks he needs a better degree, a little direction - he's half-assing it, really, but its easy enough to keep six steps ahead of the competition and charm people while he's doing it. The only reason he's back in Beacon Hill and at this stupid party is because its _traditional_ , and there are few supernatural creatures as deeply steeped in tradition as werewolves. Peter has to show his face, charm, genuflect, pretend he won't one day be Talia's Left Hand, and not leave until the moon is full risen. It's pretty close to torture.

When the kid tackles him - or his leg, rather - Peter almost spills a glass of red wine all over his head.

"Hi!" he chirps, and Peter just blinks down at him, because this has honestly never happened before. Plenty of adults prefer not to look him full in the face, much less children, who more brutally honest and far more likely to cry at any given time. 

"Hello," Peter says. 

"I’m Stiles what’s your name!" he says, all one sentence, and barrels on before waiting for an answer. Someone had at least attempted to drill manners into him. Futilely, it appeared. "I like your eyes. They’re pretty. I don’t know anyone with blue eyes! Scott has brown eyes an’ I have brown eyes an’ my mommy has brown eyes an’ my daddy’s are  _hazel_  an’ —”

"Fascinating," Peter says, but it comes out - softer than usual. Without quite as much sarcasm. 

"I like your scars," Stiles blunders on, and Peter can’t - that’s certainly something no one has ever said before, not sincerely; not sarcastically, either, or Peter would have ripped  _their_  face off. “They look cool. I thought you were a werewolf. Can werewolfs get scars? I guess. Did it hurt?” Stiles actually stops for a moment, then, and Peter feels  _helpless_ against this onslaught. Has his weakness always been blabbermouthed children? _  
_

"It did," he says, and when Stiles’s eyes dim hastens to add, "but not anymore."

"Oh. Good!" Stiles says, and moves on to discussing his favorite X-Men cartoon. 

Gradually Peter realizes there’s a bubble of silencing surrounding Stiles’s chatter, spreading out beyond them until it threatens to take over the rest of party-goers, most of whom are watching them with slightly widened eyes. A brunette over near the food table steps forward, unsteadily, and Peter can see Stiles in the soft curl of her hair. The Sheriff’s wife. Clare. No - Claudia? That sounds right.

"Stiles, sweetheart," she says, "Why don’t you go find Scott?"

Peter can feel the kid’s fingers twitch against his leg. Like he’s tempted, but he also doesn’t really feel like giving up his new toy. “But…”

"If you’re quick, you can both have another cookie before bed," and no, Peter isn’t imagining the thread of desperation in her voice. "The adults need to have some adult-talk."

"Ugh," Stiles says, and lets go of Peter’s designer slacks, leaving two little starfish-shaped wrinkles behind. " _Boring.”_

"Goodbye, Stiles," Peter finds himself saying, as if he no longer had control over his own vocal chords.

"Bye!" Stiles yells, already darting through the crowd. 

Once Stiles is nearly out of sight Claudia  _rounds_ on him, and Peter feels his hackles rise in anticipation of a battle he had no intention of starting - but will of course finish, given the chance.

But suddenly Talia is there instead, at his elbow, and reaching one open-palmed hand out to Claudia. 

"I think we should take this inside," she says firmly, as Talia, The Alpha of the Hale Pack, and for the moment no one argues.

| |

Once inside the shouting begins. Amazingly, some of it is in Peter’s defense. Even those not particularly fond of him personally, he supposes, would fight to defend a wolf and his  _mate_. It seems the main point of protest is not Peter’s relative unsuitability - he is liked by most but beloved by few - but Stiles’s age, and the way even the shouting dances around the word  _pedophile_  only subtly reinforces the point. 

"I would  _never_  hurt him,” Peter hisses, when the Sheriff comes a little too close. “I couldn’t.” I love him the way you love him, he wants to say, platonic, perfect, desperate, world-changing, more than I love myself, and isn’t  _that_  something. He’s two steps across the room, claws out, before he realizes he’s moved.

"Peter," Talia shouts, halfway to a roar, and stopping him in his tracks. "I think it’s best if you leave the room."

Talia might be his sister but she is always his Alpha first, and he knows better than to press his luck.

"I’ll be at my apartment," he snarls over his shoulder as he stalks out of the room.

| |

The sun breaks the line of the horizon before Talia returns, sheaf of papers in hand. 

"We had to make a few concessions," she says, and Peter bites back the  _anything_ that threatens to slip out. “They won’t all please you.”

"But he’s mine," Peter says, and Talia’s slow grin is a twin to his. They are, in some ways, related after all. 

"He is," she agrees, and hands over the contract.

| |

Peter puts in for a spring semester transfer to NYU. He moves to the city in the meantime and takes the fall to acquaint himself with the supernatural factions, to introduce himself and make nice. The contract only requires that he move out of state but Talia had hinted the more distance the better, and Peter cannot find he disagrees. A smart man knows his weaknesses better than his strengths, and Peter is prone to certain weaknesses over others.

The contract stipulates one letter a month, minimum, and Stiles’s always arrive punctually, on construction paper, dabbled with crayon or marker pictures, never short on stories. The ones from Stiles’s parents arrive at the same time; brisk, informative, and never overly friendly, though with time and a little distance Peter can’t entirely blame them. It must seem strange, for humans: a grown man professing his love for a child. Peter can barely explain it himself, the tiny universe carved out inside his chest, the center mass of  _Stiles_  that rests there, the last part of Peter that could ever be changed or removed or snuffed out. It  _isn’t_  sex, and when Peter tries to push himself - tries to imagine Stiles at sixteen, or twenty-six, or sixty, just in case - he can’t conjure up more than an opaque happiness at the eventuality of their life together. It doesn’t work like that. Stiles gets to grow up, and Peter will wait. 

Peter writes a letter a month as well - at first short and almost painfully inane, talking about Ninja Turtles, and defending Magneto’s aims and not his sartorial choices - and sends modest packages back to Beacon Hills with bundles of toys for his nieces and nephews, who are now Stiles’s friends. Technically a condition of the contract - continued contact with the pack - but Talia says Stiles and Cora get on like a house on fire, while Derek is teaching Stiles how to play baseball and Laura baby-Alphas her way around them all.

Stiles’s birthday is in April, and Peter has most of the Lego Super Hero line sent to the Sheriff’s house. It’s overly extravagant, and he suspects it won’t endear him to John and Claudia, but he thinks about Stiles’s shrieking, open-mouthed delight, and that’s good enough.

| |

Twelve years pass in an eternity and the blink of an eye, all at once.

Their correspondence has changed over the years. Stiles never grew out of his hasty scrawl but moved from crayons to pencils to pens, from construction paper to loose leaf to stationary, the occasional odd ‘this made me think of you’ greeting card. His sentences still have a tendency to run on, but his tone is sly, sarcastic, smart. A little dirty, on occasion, and Peter somehow knows that it makes Stiles blush a little before he starts to write the next sentence. 

And of course the world has changed; Peter will obey the law of the contract, but not its spirit. They text, they exchange emails almost daily, even if just links to youtube videos, but Peter treasures the letters most of all. Stiles is honest in them, sometimes brutally. The ones after his mother’s death are tear-stained, the ones after his friend is bitten by a rogue Omega stink of fear and excitement. He asks about werewolves more often then, asks about the bond they share, the intensity of feeling Scott has developed for Allison. He’s a little scared, Peter thinks, and he might not be wrong for that.

 _how could you leave me?_  Stiles texts one night.

It takes Peter a long time to text back.  _you deserved a childhood_ , he types out, eventually. Peter has a taste for the all-consuming; he doesn’t find it at all strange to be in the minor percentage of werewolves who have mates. And while he has  _loathed_ being away from Stiles for this long, he has come to see the necessity, and he’s glad John and Claudia insisted upon it.

Stiles doesn’t text back for another two days.

_what are you getting me for my birthday this year?_

It’s mid-January, slushy and overcast, and Peter tries his best to ignore the countdown in the corner of his mind. The days until he gives his landlord notice, two week’s notice to his job, the time until he flies out to Nevada and drives back into California, drumming his fingers restlessly against the steering wheel. His pack has come to visit him, of course - Derek goes to NYU, in point of fact, and Cora is looking at Fordham - but it will be the first time in twelve years he’s set foot in his pack’s territory, the first time in twelve years he’s seen Stiles outside of a photograph. 

 _dad can’t make me give the car back this year, just saying,_ and Peter smiles involuntarily. He might have gone extra-overboard for Stiles’s sixteenth. Angry phone calls had been exchanged. 

 _anything you want_ , he texts back.

_you’re coming home?_

_nothing in the world could keep me away_

| |

On April 7th, Peter can barely keep his control. He accidentally claws up the rental car, nearly snarls at the poor girl who tries to serve him coffee at the diner, and speeds like a bat out of hell on the interstate. He gets to Beacon Hills in the early hours and decisively takes the outer roads to his family house, well away from town. 

Talia is standing on the front porch when he gets there. “Brother,” she says, and smiles. She’s greying at her temples in earnest now. Age is not an indicator of readiness to be Alpha or reason for an Alpha to step down, but he thinks she’ll move aside for Laura soon enough.

He lets her rest her hand on the back of his neck and scratch gently, sooth him in a way she hasn’t since they were children, fumbling through adolescence while trying to keep track of their often divergent instincts. Talia always seemed meant to be Alpha, strong and sure and comfortable among all wolves, but Peter never felt as though he fit in quite anywhere. It was easier among humans, easier to be the strongest and fastest, to field their admiration and their hate.

His old room is made back up. It smells faintly stale, fresh air coming through the windows and hurriedly sweeping away the dust. Peter can’t sleep, but being back in this house - breathing in and smelling  _pack_ \- at least puts something in his chest at ease. He spends the day prowling around the house anyway and the others exchange glances behind his back when they think he can’t see; Cora’s eyebrows are particularly expressive. Then again, they’ve never seen him so on edge, so  _crazed_. He must seem like a different person.

"Moonrise is only a few hours longer," Talia says serenely, and Peter secretly hates her a little. What does she know? She married another wolf for political connections. A wolf from _Portland,_  hardly worth calling a wolf. And moonrise, for fuck’s sake. Werewolves and their traditions. It’s not the sixteenth century anymore — Stiles and Peter aren’t getting married, and Stiles isn’t being absorbed into the pack, pulled away from his family to never see them again. But by all means, have the whole thing go down at  _moonrise_. 

| |

After dinner the whole pack gathers on the lawn. They eat and drink and chat like any other celebration - adults in clusters, teenagers brooding silently, children darting in and out around everyone. It’s very like where Peter saw Stiles for the first time, and the thought is strangely settling. A parallel. An ending and a beginning.

Every werewolf in the pack can hear the Stilinskis come down the road through the forest. Cars are nearly as distinctive as footsteps, and there are few visitors so close to the Preserve. Peter clenches his fists tightly enough to shove his sharpening fingernails through skin. 

John had last sent a photo in October, near the beginning of the school year, and Stiles has grown even more since then. His cheekbones and jaw are sharper, his hair longer and in disarray. He’s tall in that way photographs can never properly convey, lean and animated, fidgeting nervously and biting his lips. And there - there is no real  _protocol,_ here _._ Peter’s never seen another ceremony like this, only ever come across someone who had a mate twice before. He’s caught between waiting for Stiles to come to him and wanting to scoop him up and run off into the woods. 

Meeting him in the middle seems like the least he could do. Or the most. Hard to put a point on it.

"Your eyes are the same," Stiles says after a moment, shaky. He smells - he smells the same but  _not_ , the same base note overlaid with sweat and teenage boy, nerves and attraction, and Peter takes a step forward. Tilts his head back to catch the full scent of him in his nose. ”I kind of thought I had remembered that wrong. You know, like. Some things you see as a kid stick with you, but when you go back as adult they’re never as big or as cool or whatever,” and his fingers brush against the scars one the side of Peter’s face, light, barely enough to be felt. “I thought I was - crazy.”

"You’re not crazy," Peter says. He can’t stop touching Stiles. His shoulders, his arms, his chest, his back. He can practically  _hear_  John grinding his teeth in the background but he can’t - Stiles is here, here,  _here_ , not crazy at all. “I’m quite memorable,” and Stiles honks out a laugh, carefree and beautiful.

| |

Stiles spends the party pressed to Peter’s side, gradually migrating into his lap. Not that Peter can keep his hands off of him. And Peter feels — buzzed. Buzzed is probably the closest equivalent. There are ways for werewolves to get drunk, but Peter doesn’t think you should have to  _apply_  yourself to have fun. This is the closest he’s come. 

"Stiles," John says, appearing before them suddenly. Stilted and proper. "I’m heading home, kiddo."

"Okay," Stiles says agreeably, and Peter inhales slowly when Stiles slides off his lap. But Stiles only hugs his father - a long hug, with back slaps, and John staring at Peter over Stiles’s shoulder; the kind of stare that makes absolutely clear John has access to wolfsbane bullets - before John ambles off to the car, other members of the pack calling out merry goodbyes at his back. 

"Are you —"

"I am absolutely 100% sure," Stiles declares. "And you didn’t get me a birthday present this year. By which I mean you owe me big time."

| |

It’s almost daybreak before they even get properly undressed, rolling around half naked on Peter’s sheets, exhausted and happy. Stiles laughs a lot when he’s tired, nonsensically and at nothing, and his eyes get lidded and heavy. Languid. He curls up on his side next to Peter, head tucked down and under Peter’s chin in a way that should be distinctly uncomfortable for a human. Like a bird tucking it’s head under its wing.

Peter thinks about waking him up the morning with a blowjob. Thinks about rolling Stiles onto his back and settling on top of him, weighing him down, giving his listless limbs something to wrap around. 

In time. All things in time, he decides, and lets sleep take him.

**Author's Note:**

> (ngl I think Talia’s negotiation tactics mostly consisted of ‘either you hammer out a contract or Peter will steal him in your sleep’)


End file.
